The Big Show: The Greatest Pilot's Story of World War II

Rating:
Summary: You won't put it down!
Review: I'm glad to see that Clostermann's book is re-printed, as my old Ballantine edition is worn thin.

If you want in-the-cockpit action, you'll find little to rival this memoir, which was compiled from Clostermann's letters to his father during the war. Clostermann began on Spitfire V's, when the going was tough; he ended in Tempests, when the going was even tougher!

Forgive Clostermann's ongoing error in referring to FW-190D's as Ta-152's: it's likely that he used the same terminology as the intelligence services.

I'm fifty. I read my first book on aerial warfare ("The Red Knight of Germany," by Floyd Gibbons) when I was eleven, and there aren't many books in the genre that I haven't read. In an impressive personal library is a tattered old paperback--Clostermann's "The Big Show." It's one of the best, and now you can enjoy it for yourself.